Facebook to Construct a Third Data Center on its Campus

Five years ago, construction crews broke ground in Forest City, North Carolina to build the first Facebook data center. Now, the company announced that they have plans to construct a third data center building on the campus.

This data center will represent an additional investment in excess of $200 million, according to Keven McCammon, site manager for the original data center in Forest City. McCammon also notes that the decision to build the first Facebook data center in Forest City was due in part to “the commitment and the vision of the community and leadership here in Rutherford County.”

The third data center building will house the latest hardware designs to come out of the Open Compute Project, which is a Facebook-led open source hardware and data center design initiative. Open Compute Project started first with only server, storage, and electrical infrastructure designs, and later added networking switch hardware.

Facebook also plans to expand its data center campuses in Altoona, Iowa and Prineville, Oregon. They are kicking off construction of their first data center in the Dallas-Fort Worth region.